Re: poor battery life on U330

Well, if anyone has a way to shut off the ATi card, why don't you provide some details? The thread is 29 pages of people describing problems so if you have a solution, why not share? Tony, you've stated before that you were able to do this. Care to tell us how?

Mark, is there any word one this or were we right that Lenovo is content in just letting this problem sit fully ignored until the product has reached EoL and then they will officially come out saying that they no longer support it? Make no mistake, I've followed any and all advice in this thread and my max capacities are still all over the map, and the only thing consistant is that the mean capacity is falling. The draw is pretty consistent, so it is in fact the battery that is faulty. No new batteries to remedy this, extra batteries to be purchased, driver updates to lower the draw, or BIOS updates to shut off the discrete card? All of these are viable options, but Leneovo seems to think that providing even one of those is beyond the scope of a solution but rather some kind of benefit or added feature.

At this point, I'm through doing QC for Lenovo. The company itself fails in any technical support functions that are fully provided to Thinkpad owners. I understand that the two lines are on different tiers, but I can't swallow the idea of maginalizing the customer because of this. I just want the level of support that I expecting from being a Thinkpad owner. Lenovo has not only taken a very laissez-faire attitude toward Ideapads, but seems to have complete disregard toward their owners.

Re: poor battery life on U330

The letterj's reponse sums up exactly how I feel as well. I have followed every piece of advice in this thread (other than running that battery test software you posted - the one where you wanted logs from - it seems that fell by the wayside) and no longer know what to do. After 6 weeks and roughly 3 hard battery resets, my fully charged capacity ala RM CPUclock is 44.9mWhrs. It has consistently fallen after each battery "calibration" - not a good sign.

I understand the logistics behind what we are asking. I know the ideapad team is completely different from the thinkpad team, so when comparing the two lines we are comparing apples to oranges. However, I also feel like there have been some pretty arbitrary decisions between what constitutes "fixing" and what constitutes "added feature." One could argue that the bios fix for the audible beep at POST is an added feature, not a fix, and yet that was pushed through rather quickly. I can't imagine that disabling power to the dedicated chip would take that many lines of code, and this bios fix definitely seems to be in the same ballpark as the audible beep fix. Neither are showstoppers, but both are to a degree inconveniences to the user. And they probably take the same amount of time to accomplish! Why choose one and not the other?

I'd also appreciate an answer on the lack of a replacement/upgrade battery option. It is mindblowingly shocking to me that lenovo isn't going to offer a backup 6 cell battery or upgraded 9 cell for the ideapad series. In this day and age I didn't even bother looking this option up, as it's possible for every other consumer line laptop out there.

It seems like theletterj has it right. The only conceiveable path for lenovo to take is to abort the ideapad line and "support" its customers until all warrenties have withered away. This is a sad route for any respectable electronics manufacturer to take, but doubly so when the product is actually wonderful and only needs a few tweaks to meet it's customers' every need. That is what is so frustrating about this whole ordeal. Most of us love this laptop, and we just cannot understand why lenovo is abondoning it the way they are. I understand it's laughable, but if this is the case and lenovo doesn't care, release the bios firmware! I'm sure a few clever people and a pot of coffee could solve the problems we have.

u330 is a nice and tidy little machine, sadly let down by a company that values its corporate deals more than its customers. A simple battery fix or a simple FOR PAY replacement/upgrade battery option would have worked wonders. Satisfied customers, positive word of mouth and all that.

On a vaguely related note: this week I steered a small company from a bulk (30-40) notebook purchase from Lenovo to another brand - the theme being: Lenovo: hardware good, support nowhere near. Keep it up, Lenovo!

Re: poor battery life on U330

I'm unsure if this still work, but I remember I disabled ATI in the device manager. Then I went to Intel's website and acquired the latest graphics drivers. I think I even ran the drivers installation in compatiabilty mode. After trying numerous ways I was able to get it to run Intel graphics. If I was on ATI there was no way for me to get 5 hrs on the battery indicator. You guys should try messing around with it. I got sick of compatibility issues with Windows 7. Minor things like active system protection, music buttons, etc. not working so I switched back to Vista.

Right now from the looks of things, I don't think they will release Windows 7 drivers until the new U330 start coming with Windows 7. You guys should wait a couple more months and Windows 7 will probably be fully supported.

Re: poor battery life on U330

On a vaguely related note: this week I steered a small company from a bulk (30-40) notebook purchase from Lenovo to another brand - the theme being: Lenovo: hardware good, support nowhere near. Keep it up, Lenovo!

I am also steering people away from Ideapads. There's definite interest among people I know because of my U330, but I just can't recommend a line of computers that has this kind of support.

Re: poor battery life on U330

Good to hear everyone is on the same page. I talked to our IT manager about the ridiculously poor support (in particular, lack of VT & battery life claims) and that was enough to have him drop Lenovo out of the running for a 200+ unit replacement contract.

I've already told a few of my friends to just buy a Macbook Pro. Granted, they're not without issues and are very utilitarian but at least they tell you right on the website how they managed to get over 7 hours of life out of their battery!

I guess if Lenovo wanted to substantiate their claim of up to 5.5 hours they'd need to disclose "With processor and screen turned off ".

I really hoped Lenovo was better than this. Fool me once...I won't fall for it again.